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April 1921.
Nearly an hour had ticked away since the hum of the automobile’s engine had sputtered into silence. The car sat hidden between the dense trees, the nearly invisible crescent moon hanging in the sky provided a cloak of darkness. The car had sat long enough warmth did no longer radiated off the engine, the cabin of the automobile as frigid as the night air outside. Yet, Esme ceased to move from her place pressed against the passenger door. The driver — who had, as of late, seemed to become the driver of her entire life — remained still, trying with all his might to follow her cue.
Through the thickset birch trees, limestone pillars stuck out from the ground. From their viewpoint the grounds were well manicured, sugar pines scattered amongst the monuments. A young, giddy couple could easily be pictured picnicking in the shade the tree surely gave off on a hot Summer day. Perhaps a child, or two, ran circles around the trunk of the tree, laughing as free as a chickadee. In another world, perhaps, this would all happen. In a world, where the plot of land through the trees did not hold children who would never play again, couples who were forever silent lying next to each other until they inevitably turned to dirt, empty plots that sat patiently awaiting their residents who would inevitably come home.
“Esme?” His voice was soft and gentle, like a sprinkle of rain on a spring day. How puzzling for something so kind to be simultaneously grating.
“Mhm,” she muttered. Her eyes remained fix on the scene ahead. If she tore her eyes from the sight it would no longer be an unmoving landscape, like the hundreds he had hung on his walls, but instead the reality she was forced to endure.
“No one will fault you if you do not wish to do this tonight.” He had not bathed after getting home from the hospital. He had not changed his clothes like she had asked him to do a dozen times, ‘an exercise in restraint’ he had said once in that patronizing tone she imagined he must have inherited from his father. The smell of humans had lodged itself into the cloth fibers, the delicious scent radiating off him. The scent mingled with the white lilies he had purchased in town. A fragrance that made her sick for an entirely different reason.
“I need to,” she said resolutely, voice hoarse with thirst and determination. She dropped her gaze to her hands clasped in her lap. Her nails were freshly manicured, as they would always look. He had shaped them while she screamed from the fire coursing through her veins. Nails that had dug into the fur and flesh of animals as she gripped them while draining them of their lives, yet always remained looking like a magazine ad. Humanity, monstrosity. Most days she felt one more stronger than the other. Today was not one of those days. “I have been working towards this for so long,” she said, her tone had softened considerably. She could at least sound human.
For months, Carlisle had dangled a reward for advancing her tolerance. While forcing her through torturous sessions of exposure, risky social interactions, and overwhelming, pain. All of it had amounted, not in a visit to town like it had for Carlisle and Edward alike, but a solitary visit to the small graveyard.
Through the beast of small town gossip, and busy minds, Carlisle and Edward had discovered a basic headstone had been purchased for the boy they never met. Funds pooled from the town who had thought Esme, though they did not know her by that name, as a loose woman carrying a child out of wedlock, who took her own life. Yet, her child was innocent, most thought, and no one could argue with her skill as a teacher. The change in their children, for the better, was what kept the collection pot moving, a giving of thanks the only way they could.
“Next month, I have a week away from the hospital, I was thinking we could drive to Columbus and visit your husband.”
Esme’s head snapped towards him, panic lacing her voice. “Why ever would we do that?”
Carlisle’s attention turned out the window, hiding a blush that he knew very well would never surface. It had taken a considerable amount of self control to never broach the subject of the husband she never spoke of, curiosity stung his tongue at times until the questions forced their way out. “His grave, I meant. I know — well, I have heard, that he passed in the war, I presumed he had a monument back home.” She did not respond, and he took it as permission to keep speaking. He turned to face her, finding her eyes fixed on his face, eyes narrowed in examination. He let his hand drift to the center of the bench seat, inches away from hers but closer than it had been. “I cannot fathom the amount of loss you have been through, Esme. All in the matter of a year to lose your son, your husband. ”
The passenger door swiftly opened and closed, the slam of the door frightening a crow from its perch with a loud cry. She began her trek up to the cemetery, bouquet of white lilies in hand, never once looking back to see if he had followed, he had.
She eventually stopped at the perimeter of the graveyard, Carlisle’s loud footsteps let her know he had taken the place at her side.
“They have the children buried separately,” he said quietly. “It is called the garden of innocents, in the left corner I believe.”
“What an awful name,” she scoffed.
“Oh?”
“As if any of us need a reminder they are planted in the dirt, it is not like new ones will bloom in Spring. Although I suppose for many they will.”
Her hand had drifted, unconsciously, to side of her stomach. A reminder of what had been, and would never be again. Her eyes glanced down at her hand, as if it was someone else’s entirely, and she forced it into the pockets of her skirt. Carlisle turned his head to look away, too quickly to pretend that he had not been staring.
Guilt felt like a knife, plunged into his side and twisted by a violent hand.
“Would you like me to stay here, or walk with you?” He asked, motioning to the “Garden of Innocents.”
“I would like to do this alone, please,” Esme said quietly.
He nodded understandingly. “I will be right here if you need me.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, beginning to walk through the cemetery a little slower than a human. She read the names as she passed by them, eventually reaching the first child. A little girl, eight years old, who died in 1918. ‘Our darling angel,’ was inscribed in the stone. The last name, “Shaw” felt familiar but she could not place how she would have known the family. Nevertheless, she plucked one of the lilies from the bouquet and placed it onto of the stone.
She continued on, feeling drawn to the spot she knew her son rested before she even read the name on the modest stone, a piece of limestone bigger than the boy it memorialized ever would be. His name was wrong. The last name was one she had pulled from a newspaper crumpled on the train station floor as she fled. It held no significance, was nothing more than a tool of survival, and it was the only name her son would ever be called. The rational part of her knew it was better this way, that ‘Platt’ behind the boy’s first name — that had quickly become a sacred prayer to her — would have only spurred gossip. Yet, she had to clamp her hand down to resist the urge to carve it into the stone with her nails.
She walked closer to the stone slowly, a bundle of wildflowers had been set at the base of the grave, roots hanging off the flowers. One of her students, she presumed, but could not remember any of them well enough to begin to make a guess. She knelt at the base of the stone, placing down her own bouquet and gently picking up the flowers, but underestimating her overwhelming strength and crushing them in her hand.
Carlisle had quietly crept through the graves, still maintaining his distance but getting himself just a little closer. He watched, as she knelt at the grave, placing down the flowers he had purchased. ‘They are a symbol of mourning,’ he had told her, hoping she did not realize every bouquet he had ever brought her had a message attached.
He watched as Esme, seemingly out of nowhere, scrambled backwards, clutching her hand over her nose. Her back slammed against a marble headstone, a crack climbing through the stone. She angled herself, to allow herself to crawl backwards without more property damage. A good ten or twelve feet were put between her and the grave before her back collided with Carlisle’s legs.
He stepped forward, a hand on her back to balance her, kneeling at her side. “Are you alright?”
Her eyes were wide, almost as dark as the night sky, nails digging into her cheek as her hand remained latched to her face.
“The smell,” she whimpered. “He…” she sucked in a gasp, “he reeks.”
Carlisle’s grasp on her tightened, moving his hand from her back to her arm. He looked around for the human who must have caused such a reaction, finding nothing his attention returned to her. “Esme. Do you smell someone?”
“Him. He smells like he’s rotting.”
She wrapped the blanket around him tighter, cradling him in the nook of her elbow. He was already drifting to sleep, having only woken up to feed twenty minutes prior. “It must be exhausting being so perfect,” she cooed softly, running her finger gently over his cheek. She leaned down, pressing a kiss to his forehead, she buried her nose in his blonde as wheat hair and breathed in. Sweet and clean, a tinge of milk and the soap she used to bathe him the night before. He smelled like everything that had led her to that moment was completely worth it.
The flowers dropped from her hand as the smell of death hit her nose. Senses heightened as they were meant she could smell the decay six feet under her. There was no question about what it was. It was sweet and repugnant, traces of a smell she had smelled once before, but corrupted and horrific.
She crashed into Carlisle’s legs before she realized she was moving. His questions were as if he was underwater, she heard only fragments of the words. Despite her distance the smell had lodged itself into her nose, wrapped its arms around her and was threatening to suffocate her.
“They wait to bury until the ground thaws,” he said quietly beside her, mostly to himself. “He has been kept cold. They must have just buried him. It completely slipped my mind that this could happen. Esme, I’m sorry.”
‘Just buried him,’ stuck in her mind like an axe in a stubborn stump. She knew enough from the disgusting medical books lined the walls of Carlisle’s study, to know the cold would have halted the decay.
She lurched forward, crawling on her hands and knees until she reached her son’s plot. Her hands dug into the dirt, fistfuls of soil flying around her. She made it a foot, maybe two, before hands hooked under her arms. “Esme,” he said. She kept digging.
She felt herself be lifted into the air, legs flailing as she tried to get out of his grasp.
“Esme, stop,” he said more sternly than she had ever heard him speak. She did not cease, still trying to force her way out of his hold. His hands moved to hold her knees to her chest, her back against his chest as he dragged her away from the grave.
“If I let you go, are you going to run?” He asked, as their car came into view.
“You don’t understand,” she whined. She felt out of control, her mind focusing on the mission as hand as determined as it was when on a hunt. ‘Feral,’ was the word Edward had described the feeling as. ‘Rabid,’ is the word she used.
“Can you try to help me understand?” His tone was so sweet, he was always so sweet towards her, even after she left scratch marks in his skin. She felt the fight leaving her body, like water down a drain, going limp. He held her in the forceful hold for another minute, before trusting the weakness and setting her on the ground. He turned her by the shoulders, hands returning to hold her by the upper arms, so they were face to face.
“I don’t remember what he looks like,” she said, voice sounding as if she was sobbing despite that being impossible. Oh, how she yearned for tears.
“Oh, Esme,” he sighed, moving his arms so they wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her to his chest. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered against her hair.
“He’s only been there a little while,” she reasoned. “I only want to see him.”
“You do not want to see him, I promise you.”
“What kind of mother forgets?” She choked out. She felt his hand move from her shoulders to the back of her head, cradling it like it was precious. He smelled like him, like death, like blood.
“One who had no choice,” he said, as if it was painful.
“If I could only see him, I will move the dirt back.”
He pulled away from her, leaning down to look her in the eyes. “Esme, listen to me. You do not want to see him right now. No image, is better than this image.”
“But—”
“No,” he said decisively. “I know it does not feel like it now, but one day you will realize I am protecting you.”
She nodded, not believing him, but trusting him, and knowing trust had to be enough for now. Tentatively, she pulled him back into a hug. There they stood — this time he smelt less like death and blood and more like him and home — for a while. Carlisle desperately trying to ward off his old friends guilt and regret, Esme attempting to get back to a safe ground.
“Can we go home?” She asked eventually.
“Of course,” he said. He thought of how he would have to ask Edward to come and fix the grave when they got home, opening the passenger door.